Botanist Restaurant in Vancouver

The Botanist Restaurant

Architects: Ste. Marie Art and Design

Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada

The Botanist Restaurant is Grande Cafe by way of the Pacific Northwest. A place that one can take breakfast, lunch, dinner or drinks. An overall sense of refined conviviality is the goal of the design. We have divided the space into quarters – with each area having a bit of its own personality.

The Champagne lounge, umbilically connected to the hotel lobby has a kind of “pop” sensibility while still leaning into the glamour inherent in a room focused on that regal French fluid. Knife pleated drapery, Rose colored furniture and well-appointed gold-decked bar carts do the job of keeping things proud yet playful in this area.

The Cocktail bar, on the other hand, is monolithic, with a darker pallet of Italian Terrazzo as the backdrop for the beautiful and nuanced drinks being built by the fellows with the long spoons therein. Next to the cocktail bar is a small terrace and interior garden where the plant-life is the overwhelming focus.

Finally, we hit the dining room with its mixture of various limestones, whitewashed woods and ornate metalwork from which our collection of indigenous plant materials creep. This room is the belly of the restaurant and is intended to be an invigorating place to gather, dine and drink in a space that walks the line between irreverent and poised.

The design of The Botanist was conceived of as a series of micro ecologies within the overall concept of a space rooted in the terra firma of the Pacific Northwest. Through shifts in intensity of texture, material and light each space occupies a distinct layer in the sequence of the space’s narrative. The bar is monolithic and sculptural, its shelves and mantles offer alternating references to early modernism and the powerful architecture of the quarry.

The garden, the most intense expression of botany, is overstuffed, brim-ming over with plant species. Enclosed inside a minimal glass room, the striking and peregrine beauty of the plant life is exhibited In the dining room the focus becomes the subtle but rich, natural tones of limestone, granite, and wood. These materials are stacked, blocked, layered and de-posited into service stations that evoke compositions almost mineral in nature. Throughout the entirety of the space, the plant life acts as a gentle counterpoint to the substantial and geological character of the materials.